To underwrite a dynamic series of High Holiday programs, Pico Union Project (PUP) launched a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign this summer. In less than two months, donations totaled more than $62,000, supporting a wide range of creative events including teen services, meditative stitching and innovative services with musician Craig Taubman, PUP’s founder and artistic director.

Every Jew worth his weight in latkes knows “I Have a Little Dreidel,” aka “The Dreidel Song,” but Myron Gordon knows the holiday ditty better than most. That song, written nearly 90 years ago by his father, Samuel E. Goldfarb, has become both a family legacy and a bridge to a kind of personal healing.

With the launch of the Sanctuary@Pico Union next month, Craig Taubman — the singer / songwriter who co-founded Sinai Temple’s influential “Friday Night Live” services — aims to bring Jewish congregational life to a venue that has not seen any in nearly a century.

LA Magazine recently came to Craig’s Pico Union Project to interview him about the basis of his multi faith, multicultural house of worship. Reporter Shayna Rose Arnold did a great job capturing the importance of PUP and of Craig’s vision for the non-profit. Read more here.

At historic L.A. synagogue, songwriter pushes interfaith harmony and urban renewalOn the first floor of the Pico Union Project, members of the Women’s Mosque of America are preparing the historic sanctuary for prayers, spreading long bolts of cloth on the floor, hanging a banner from the organ loft and placing an open copy of the Koran in the just-vacated Holy Ark. Outside, news crews — including one from an Italian television station — have gathered to document this gathering of the mosque, reportedly the first women’s mosque in America and already the subject of international headlines. Across the street, police officers monitor the situation, just in case. On the second floor, with the Torah just taken from the ark leaned against a wall nearby, Craig Taubman ruefully considers the flurry of activity.

On Friday, August 29, Cantor Craig Taubman hosted his fourth annual Shabbat at the Ford, which took place at the historic Ford Amphitheater. The open-air venue was the perfect setting for such an event. “It’s the summer for gosh sakes,” remarked Taubman, and it sure felt like it, with sweltering temperatures reaching the 90s by mid-day.

At 6 pm, the event kickstarted in the theater’s courtyard with a picnic-style BYOK (Bring Your Own Kiddush). Families and friends shared makeshift Shabbat meals served in tupperware containers while they sipped two buck chuck from plastic cups. The overall mood was easy and relaxed as klezmer-revivalist band Mostly Kosher serenaded the crowd.

Meet the free-thinking Jewish musician who created a new kind of interfaith center in the heart of L.A. When you enter the Pico-Union Project in the heart of downtown L.A., you don’t know exactly what you are walking into.